Arcturus - Constellation EP (1994)

Constellation certainly earned Arcturus' status as an early exemplar of symphonic black metal, there weren't a whole lot of acts back in the early through mid 90s that had embraced the niche to this extent, and several of those ran in the same circles with these very Norwegians. With members of Ulver, Emperor and Mayhem in tow, this was also one of the first 'supergroups' in the scene, as well as a side project that would quickly be elevated to a nearly equivalent level as some of the roster's mainstays. What's more, Constellation showed a little more depth to the writing than one might have expected, while also foreshadowing some of the group's cosmic circus inclinations in the structure and silliness (however unintentional) of how Garm's vocals balanced out against the guitars and synthesizers.

I remember it feeling like a bit of a mess at first, but only because I was unacclimated to the sound compared to something more scathingly sinister and serious like In the Nightside Eclipse. It's obvious from the start that Arcturus were more interested in slowing things down, giving them an operatic sweep and bombast, while integrating Hellhammer's driving double bass and some simpler Samoth rhythm guitars that helped support Sverd's symphonics. Speaking of which, a lot of this EP could almost be considered a more heavily orchestrated alternative to the formative dungeon synth of Mortis, filtered through a slowly spinning Gothic carousel. The synth tones are bright against the roiling rhythms, the piano lines graceful and eerie, but all well-enough executed to make this stand out against everything else going on in their scene at the time. The other truly distinct ingredient is the performance of Kristoffer Rygg, whose quirky mix of howls, chants and rasp were a preamble to a lot of the experimentation he'd later explore with Ulver, as well as the folksier vocal side of groups like Borknagar, Solefald and Enslaved, who would all follow comparably progressive (and weird) paths to this group, with mutual members cross-pollinating ideas in the process.

It's a delightful enough adventure on its own, but Constellation does suffer one crippling deficiency for me, in that I greatly prefer the re-recordings of these tracks on their full-length debut. They're all largely the same, with the exception that "Icebound Streams and Vapours Gray" was renamed to "Wintry Grey" (an inferior title) and Carl August Tidemann's guitar recording sounds a little more nuanced, intricate and atmospheric than Samoth's originals (still giving credit to the man where it's due). Garm's presence also comes across a little more bizarre and memorable there, and an airiness is infused throughout that session which slightly better matches the aurora lighting on the cover arts. That said, if you can grab the reissues of this EP with all the bonus material, including the crude and creepy "My Angel", which feels like a more industrial/electronic spin on the style they composed here, and "Morax", a much heavier tune with a sort of raw blackened/doom vibe, you'll eke out a little more value than just the four core tracks that are better represented two years later. Either way, Constellation is the first mile of a trip towards excellence, but not without some bumps on the road.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (Hither-whirling, thither-swirling)

https://www.facebook.com/arcturusnorway

Megadeth - Youthanasia (1994)

Megadeth was clearly one of those 'too big to fail' sort of metal bands that had established enough of a presence by the 90s that they weren't going to necessarily be ended by all the grunge, nu metal and alternative rock exploding in popularity, but that doesn't mean they weren't going to undergo some sort of shift with the times. Like their peers, they sought a simplification and safety net, a more mainstream presence without the abandonment of their genre, and Youthanasia sounds exactly like that: a streamlining of Countdown to Extinction with a lot of that same sort of processed sound, less riffs per track, and a huge focus on standard rock song structure and choruses. This was clearly The Black Album or The Ritual for Mustaine and crew, only a couple years later, and I'm sure it was a jumping off point for a lot of disenchanted 'first four' purists.

Remarkably, Youthanasia works, and it works really damn well, Megadeth more than capable of strapping themselves into this simpler style and writing songs that still matter. There are still a good number of catchy, heavy riffs, as in opener "Reckoning Day" or "Black Curtains", it's just that the band is no longer focused on maintaining the dizzying velocity or complexity of a Rust in Peace. The hooks are just as big, but they're steadily treading towards the glorious, heartfelt chorus sections in tunes like "Addicted to Chaos" or one of my favorites, "Blood of Heroes" (no relation to the underrated Rutger Hauer dystopian combat sport flick, I'm afraid). There are still a few moments that flirt with the up-tempo, as in the palm muted sprints of "Train of Consequences", but this is really just 50 minutes of controlled momentum, cool leads, and riffs with more pent up power than finesse. Dave's vocals manage not to irritate me anywhere here like they did on "Sweating Bullets", and it's clear he is incorporating as much melody to his pitch as possible, though it's just not in his nature to lose that sneering, lip-curling edge.

Acoustic guitars return, like the atmospheric intro to "Blood of Heroes" or "A Tout le Monde", which is probably the closest thing to a proper power ballad the band had released by this point, but still relies mostly on rock chords. Ellefson, Menza and Friedman might feel underused throughout this selection, because the minimalized structure of the songs doesn't require much of them, yet the bass tone still sounds pretty strong throughout, the drumming suits the more commercial/hard rock vibe, and Marty will make almost anything sound good, from a cartoon jingle to a metal lead. In fact, though I'm sure it took some effort to craft tracks this catchy, Youthanasia must have felt like a vacation on the band's appendages, it's never dialed in but it's certainly not taxing upon the anatomy. Production-wise, this sounds like a slightly slicker Countdown to Extinction, the rhythm guitars are smoother in tone and lack much of the bite other than the few harder hitting tracks I mentioned above. All the instruments are balanced well and allow Dave's pipes, the most taxed body part on this album, the shine...and they do.

No real stinkers here, so you might argue that this is the most consistent Megadeth album outside of Rust in Peace, even if it's consistent on a more subdued level. The riffs don't often dazzle me, but they are all pretty memorable in how they service their respective tracks, even "I Thought I Knew It All", in which the slowly pumping verse reminds me a lot of something off The Black Album. Ironically, while this album didn't move a fraction of what Metallica did with their colossal, catchy sellout, this album holds up more for me, there's nothing which has been overkilled to the point that I no longer want to hear it ("Enter Sandman", "The Unforgiven", etc). I still think I like The Ritual the most of these sorts of West Coast watering-downs, but I realize I am alone in that opinion, and that's not to take away from how timeless and rock-solid Youthanasia remains. Hell, I even like this and return to it more than a few of their 80s efforts, but at the same time, this is also the end of the Golden Age of Megadeth for me, with one small exception.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]

https://www.megadeth.com/

Annihilator - King of the Kill (1994)

King of the Kill seems to get a little bit of a break as a pivot back to form or a redemption from the miserable Set the World on Fire, but I find such to be a bit of critical doggerel, because this album is arguably even worse an offender than its predecessor, the one difference being that Jeff Waters has taken over the vocal duties himself. His style is largely comparable to Aaron Randall, don't get me wrong, with a little Randy Rampage in there since he knows what the crowd probably wants, but the delivery is thankfully superior to the third album and at least shows us all that he is capable of expressing these musical ideas into lyrics himself, without needing some third party to flop about like a fish drowning in air. Alas, the musical content of King of the Kill is so uneven and grasping at straws that there is just no saving it from sodden mediocrity, and it ends up sucking even worse.

1994. Thrash is dead. Or it's become Far Beyond Driven. Jeff Waters is still chipping away at the dream, but instead of taking what the band did best on Alice in Hell and Never, Neverland, he's alternating those thrash licks, which he can still play quite well, with an increasing number of acoustics, ballad-like songs which are instantly forgettable, dumb lyrics, lazy song titles, and detritus that often feels like he had been writing for another, more commercial rock band and then shoved that onto an Annihilator disc to stuff out some recording contract. How do you sign this band on the strength of prior releases, get submitted this shit and then actually pay money to send it to factory? For me to even take King of the Kill remotely seriously I would need to clip off at least 8-8 lame tracks like the goofy "Bad Child", "In the Blood", or "Speed" which feels like Jeff is channeling his inner Nuno Bettencourt except it's not actually catchy like Extreme was in their prime. There are also a number of thrash riffs here which sound like he was even dumbing that particular style down to a Black Album level, but again, not nearly as good as coming up with songs as the Bay Area boys were in that era.

The album is possibly the most polished in terms of production to what they had done at the time, but that only adds to its commercial crappiness, as it lacks that glorious mix of crisp mix and songcraft as they possessed in the 1989-1990 period. The bass actually sounds pretty loud and well performed, but it's all for naught. The guitars, while obviously quite competent, are a real letdown: the thrash riffs are uniformly unmemorable, the acoustics don't enchant like "Crystal Anne" once did, and the hard rock theatrics are lamentable. If I condensed this record down to two tracks, let's say "King of the Kill" itself and something like "21", and dressed those up with better ideas, then you might have a tolerable single's worth of material, but the rest of this is uninspired, lazy dreck that seems as if a weak Jett Waters solo album that was rebranded as Annihilator because, you know, branding. Don't get me wrong; I admire Waters' ability to boldly go forth and continue after a disaster such as this, but the stain remains.

Verdict: Fail [3.5/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Fertilizer - A Painting of Annoyance (1994)

One of the stranger acts on the Invasion Records roster, and one of the earlier examples I can think of as a progressive death metal band out of Europe, Germany's Fertilizer put out an album that was likely looked over for being ahead of its time, or just too scattershot for what much of the metal crowd was looking for in the mid-90s. That's not to say that death metal bands weren't blazing trails all over the place, whether it was Amorphis or Dark Tranquillity there were plenty of new sounds emerging within this sonic space, but they were also a lot catchier and slicker than A Painting of Annoyance's clunkier disposition. The album's title is not accurate of its contents, fortunately, we're not talking any level of obnoxiousness, and there's somewhat of a direction to the whole thing, but some of the tunes' compositions seem randomly strung along.

It's choppy death metal with a lot of slower to mid-paced riffs that sound pretty thin despite the chunkier palm muting that drives them. Higher pitched melodies are spit throughout, but these also suffer from a tone that's too dry or clinical. The bass is decent, the drumming is often incredible as they mete out some hyperspeed kick drums that seem far too intense for the rest of the instruments. The vocals are your normal guttural but sometimes they sit in some reverb or effects and howl out over the mix, and they also implement some acoustic guitars, neo-classical note patterns, and clean harmonic vocals that give it a weird, pastoral folk prog feel in the opening to "Solar Vertigo" or the chorus of "T.U.S.C". There are a few points at which you think the band is about to go off like an Atheist or Believer, but then every stays rather reined in, I'm reminded a bit more of their countrymen Atrocity on some of their weirder records before they went Goth, or even the Dutch bands Creepmine and Phlebotomized who performed a lot in these similar tempos and vocals.

The album flows along and makes enough sense, unlike its fragmented cover imagery, but it just seems like the tracks aren't organized in a fashion to make them particularly exciting, and I just don't think the production beyond the drums and vocals is really enough to give this the 'oomph' it needs. Still, if you're in the market to track down some strange and obscure death metal which wasn't hung up on the trends of its times, Fertilizer's album might keep you curious for a spin or two, but if you put it up against something like Pestilence's Spheres or Cynic's Focus, it's nowhere near that same level of successful experimentation.

Verdict: Indifference [6/10]

Excrement - Scorched EP (1994)

After hearing records like Demilich's opus Nespithe, Demigod's Slumber of Sullen Eyes, or Sentenced's North From Here, I was quite excited for more Finnish death metal as it was developing parallel or just behind the neighboring Swedish scene. Seeing that Invasion Records had snapped up another upstart called Excrement for an EP, with a fairly cool cover (though a shitty non-logo) for the time, I was instantly on board, and glad so, because for a band with such limited discography, the material here is quite seasoned, having a good production to it that was honestly superior to some of their peers. Where they might fall behind a Demilich or Sentenced is in innovation, what's present here is pretty much an amalgam of classic Floridian style with a bit of that mournful melancholy you catch in the Swe-death melodies of groups like Entombed or Dismember.

It puts its strongest feet forward with the bleak melodies that inaugurate the battering of "Corpse Fucking Art", a track that itself consists of some roiling, chugging rhythms interspersed with flightier melodic passages, giving a pretty broad taste of what the band can pull off. I was even happier when in the midst of "Scorched", the band broke off into this segue with bass, clean guitars and keyboards which was a beautiful way to pull that track together, and though the rest of the fare is more easily forgotten, it still sounds decent when re-listening, and contains a lot of the same elements. The vocals have a brute growl to them which reminds me of Johan's grunts on Tiamat's Clouds, although the music is quite different, and there are some solid leads put together on pieces like "Sleep" or "Distortion", and at the end of the day, it's the atmosphere that rises this above the death metal average of its days. A pity that we never got a full-length or anything further, but the main dude has gone on to play in a bunch of good bands like Cadaveric Incubator and Slugathor that are worth a listen.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

Fermenting Innards - Drowned EP (1994)

Though Fermenting Innards would go on to put out one of my favorite albums on the entire Invasion Records roster, I had never before heard their original 1994 EP Drowned, which is largely comprised of songs that didn't make it onto their sole full-length. And I'm glad to have checked it out, because while the tracks here don't quite match up to what was coming, this is easily one of the better EPs that arrived in the earlier years of that label's existence. What you have here is basically a Florida-style death metal with some churning Obituary groove to it, perhaps a small amount of that Hellhammer-to-D-beat Swedish influence arriving later in the first track "In Hate". In addition, you can hear a little of why the band earns the black/death metal hybrid tag, though I feel they fall far more decisively on the latter, there are some elements of their blasted rhythms and synths which showcase traces of that...

Still, the riff patterns are largely more clinical and morbid/gory and don't really give me the aesthetic imprints I associate with black metal of the Satanic, nature-themed or folk/Viking variety. This is mostly a bit of death/thrash inspired, reasonably produced material redolent of other German bands like Morgoth or old Atrocity, with a little trace of Carcass or the abovementioned Florida bands. It's nothing too exciting, because the guitar tone isn't all that great, and the tunes aren't littered with amazing, memorable riffs, but if you're looking for some European death metal gems from that mid-90s era, this is a band that was severely overlooked, despite being on the same plane of competence of so many that are now hailed as cult classic bands or albums. Drowned pretty much runs the gamut for the death-styles of its day, only omitting the more brutal/technical niche that was arriving through a Suffocation. A decent appetizer for what was to come the following year...

Verdict: Win [7/10]

Sentenced - The Trooper EP (1994)

Apart from the obvious novelty of hearing Sentenced perform their more snarling, aggressive version of the Maiden classic, The Trooper EP is in a weird place, because it was released right between the band's major shift in styles from North From Here to Amok, and weirdly enough, the originals here actually create a bridge between them. You're still getting some of that fluid, weird, semi-technical death metal from the former, but its' embedding into melodic, rocking heavy metal riffs that would come with my favorite era of the band, the Taneli Jarva-led Amok. In fact, "Desert by Night" leans more heavily towards that, where "In Memoriam" definitely sounds like it could have been an outtake from North From Here, only with mildly cleaner production, but still very much in that pure Finnish death metal realm.

The last track, "Awaiting the Winter Frost", is actually taken from that album, and while it's a good song it really wasn't necessary on this release, so a little value is docked. And truthfully, I couldn't care less about "The Trooper" cover, I love Jarva's vocals here but they just sound kind of cluttered on this, whereas he goes broad and deeper for the amazing Amok. Don't get me wrong, they stay on the beat, but the backing vocals are flimsy and I don't know that the song gains all that much with just that added level of aggressive paint. The real attraction here are those two fresh songs, and since you can probably just nab this whole EP on a North From Here CD as bonus content, it doesn't stand up as an essential release. Still, you got that little peek of what was to come, and how amazing it might be, and boy was it...

Verdict: Indifference [5.5/10]

Mercyful Fate - Time (1994)

While I don't take exception to records like Into the Unknown or 9, which manage to channel most of Mercyful Fate's positive qualities, it's 1994 and Time which delineates the border for me between the Danes' 'timeless' (oh boy, I did not plan that) works, and those that really don't strike much of a chord with me when I'm scanning through the albums I wanna upload to my iPhone or whatnot. While it holds nothing on my unholy trinity of Don't Break the Oath, Melissa and In the Shadows, it is the last album that I can listen to entirely without ever really needing to skip any weaker tracks, the last one chronologically which I feel an urge to actually experience in sum. It just manages to maintain that sinister air of mystery that surrounded the band (and King's solo career) through the 80s, and for all intensive purposes it sounds like a record which belongs to that era...rather than being smack dab in the middle of a decade in which a group like this one only managed to thrive off its legacy rather than any new string of cult classic material.

Structurally, it's not a far cry from In the Shadows, in that it relies so heavily on mid-paced songs and extremely melodic, almost anthemic vocal lines from King, but at the same time it's both smoother and less ambitious. The lyrics still convey the themes of mysticism and horror, from the familiar ground of "Witches' Dance" which wouldn't have felt out of place on King Diamond's The Eye, to "The Mad Arab" which is a direct tribute to H.P. Lovecraft's recurring Abdul Alhazred. Diamond sounds perfect here as he shifts between his ghostly falsettos and impish lower pitches, in fact he throws a lot of the 'character' into his performance that many would probably equate more with his solo band, and I think of the whole Fate canon this is likely the greatest aesthetic 'crossover' between the two. Nary a tune passes without some memorable vocal passage, and it doubles down on how you take a listen to an album like Dead Again, or the pathetic The Graveyard and wonder where all this magic disappeared to in such a short time? Time might not have all the band's hits, but it is surely determined to make itself memorable throughout the 47 minute duration and it largely succeeds.

Another real strength here is how with these largely mid-tempo tunes the Denner/Shermann duo can lay into all manner of their great, groovy riffs, as well as the mildly progressive bent they often take with their riffs, just so that they eclipse the utter simplicity of audience expectations. Lots of great, doomy moments here with the drums shuffling along like graveyard creepers as King emits some exotic and pained vocal narration, and like In the Shadows before it, or the first decade of solo albums, the entire affair seems like its just focused on the listener experiencing this one in some mental moonlight, haunted landscape, tower or manor if the real thing isn't available. The title track with its organs and freakish harmonized lullaby vocals seems like it might have stepped out of a session for Them or Conspiracy, down to how it just sails right into those dreamy guitar melodies and chorus. Synthesizers, wah-wah and other effects are thrown in tastefully, and although I didn't have the same problem with the drums on its predecessor that some seemed to, I think Snow Shaw's beats here might prove a little more durable and evenly mixed to support the guitars and vocals. Sharlee's bass is perfectly supportive and steps away just as often as it needs to, with a great tone that hovers right above the kick.

The contrast between the lucid vocals and dirty riffs of "Mirror", unforgettable anthems like opener "Nightmare Be Thy Name" and "Witches' Dance"...this one just never quits playing to its strengths, and it's still a pleasure to experience 27 years later. Like many of his solo efforts, this one's also a perfect Halloween listen, and was released in that very month upon arrival. It's 'classy' of course, this one isn't about the blood and guts but the evergreen themes of Gothic, occult or even cosmic horror that will still send a chill down your spine at any age, regardless of the melodic breezes on which they are carried. It may not be a masterpiece, but it's great, and it STAYS great. At the risk of broken record status, I have to reiterate how these first four Mercyful Fate full-lengths, along with the first 5-6 King Diamond represent one of the most enduring bodies of work in my whole music collection. Seasonal or otherwise, they don't seem to age a day to when I first came across them from the raw, ripe ages of 10-20 years old. I cannot thank King and both his crews enough for the countless hours of enjoyment and escape they've written. Even my idiosyncratic Country lovin' big city significant other has fallen under these spells.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10] (prayer in unknown tongue)

https://mercyfulfatecoven.com/

Helloween - Master of the Rings (1994)

Master of the Rings might not technically qualify as a 'comeback' album, since the band never really went anywhere, but it as sure as fuck one of the best 'bounceback' albums I've ever experienced, the survivors of the Pink Bubbles/Chameleon Apocalypse reemerging with new members and an honestly fresh take on the power metal they had so pioneered through the 80s. If I complained about the prior two albums lacking in any real 'hit' power, Master of the Rings is almost nothing BUT tracks that hang around in your head long after the playtime has winded down. I picked this up instantly upon seeing it at the local metal section, and immediately thought they had done some kind of new play on the Seven Keys legend, but with rings instead. Little did I know that I would end up one day appreciating this even MORE than the second half of that conceptual duology that broke them onto the radars of heshers everywhere about 7-8 years prior.

This album has it all...the subdued synthesizers of "Irritation" explode into the knockout combo of "Sole Survivor" and "Where the Rain Grows", two of my favorite songs in the entire Helloween catalogue, and they were on fire with this inexhaustible energy they hadn't had in years. Blazing melodic riffs lead the charge, with Michael Weikath and Roland Grapow offering a wide range of attacks, with few misplaced notes and a song selection that's nearly as diverse as Chameleon before it, only this time it's all fantastic. But we really have to give some credit to the inescapable charms of Andi Deris, who crossed over to the band from the unfortunately-monikered Pink Cream 69, a band dwelling on the border between catchy heavy metal and sleazy MTV near-glam, who already had a number of good under albums beneath their collective belts, so it's no wonder this guy was an attractive choice. He's got much of the range of his predecessors, and yet a more silky intonation which is quite unique, and his performance here ranges from soothing ballads to atmospheric screams. What are the fucking chances that a band gets not two, but three amazing vocalists in its lifetime? If you think about it, that's usually something that only happens to the mega hard rock and prog rock acts.

Let's talk production, because it was quite different. There's a more modern, compressed bite to the rhythm guitars which feels like the band was joining a new century rather than attempting to just mimic their past works. However, they add some nice tones and effects to the leads that counteract the low end for some awesome atmosphere. This is a band whose leads can literally take an already great track to the next level. Markus Grosskopf's bass lines strut along happily, he's got plenty of room in that mix, and drummer Uli Kusch was another colossal pickup, coming over from, ironically, Kai Hansen's Gamma Ray. There was not a weak link among the roster here and despite whatever friction occurred later, this might have been the greatest pool of raw talent they'd assembled until arguably the recent Pumpkins United years. Ever cylinder is firing, from the gorgeous charging and chugging of "Still We Go", to the almost obnoxiously catchy "Perfect Gentleman" with its whistle-sounding melodies that almost come off like the anthem for a beer company; we're talking "I Want Out" level catchy. Even the freaking power ballad, "In the Middle of a Heartbeat", is a raging success.

What's more, if you got the awesome 2CD version from Castle Records, you got an additional 35 minute desk featuring a couple of leftovers like "Can't Fight Your Desire", which is nearly good enough to be on the album proper, as well as a trio of covers, my favorite of which is naturally Thin Lizzy's "Cold Sweat", but they do justice to KISS and Grand Funk Railroad too. It might be little more than an afterthought or a bone thrown to the fans to keep the sales up, but it feels pretty elaborate for a bonus disc...there's certainly thrown into the instru-metal shredder "Grapowski's Malmsuite 1001 (In D-Doll)", you have to imagine that might have been something planned for an album proper. I'm often stunned by some of the lukewarm reactions this album occasionally gets...I was hooked from the moment I laid ears on it, and these day's it's got to stand as one of my top 3-4 Helloween efforts with ease, and the beginning of an impressive 25+ year streak which had only a few fumbles. The diehards will always revere Walls of Jericho and Keeper of the Seven Keys, and sure, I am among them, but if I'm keeping count, this is the beginning of their most consistent and prolific era and some of its works demand just as much respect.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.25/10]

https://www.helloween.org/

Rage: 10 Years in Rage: The Anniversary Album (1994)

It's an interesting premise: an album created to promote and celebrate the first decade of a band's existence, and comprised not of entirely new compositions to show where the band was currently at or headed, but a whole bunch of cutting room floor material from the era of the band's first seven studio full-lengths, being recorded for the first time in either its original form, edited, rewritten or expanded. It's almost as if Rage decided, rather than consigning a bunch of odds and ends to an endless cavalcade of B-sides and CD bonus tracks, of which they already had a great deal, to properly repurpose and smooth over this material into a more palatable presentation that fans will care about a lot more than if it had just been left in the ether, or squandered as bonus tracks. It's a good and worthy idea; granted, a great percentage of musical artists build their product from a number of ideas they're recycling through their history, but this is just a more formal and 'official' way to market it. I'd also be lying if I said I hadn't been jazzed up at the chance to hear more material in the mold of one of my favorite German bands' 'prime', or at least what I considered to be.

Sadly, 10 Years in Rage doesn't light the world on fire with a bunch of unforgettable material, and many of the tunes probably represent filler at best, but not for any lack of trying or laziness on the band's behalf. In fact, a lot of the tracks probably just can't overcome that shaped around riffs and progressions that weren't all that catchy in the first place. You've got some blazing material on this like "Vertigo" and "Dangerous Heritage" which feels like vintage Rage momentum sans the truly memorable chorus parts. There are a handful of riffs or passages on the album that are worthwhile on their own, and if you just have a fondness for the band's overall style then I can't imagine you'd feel ripped off by this, as background noise it could be worse than just to have more 'Rage' playing. A handful of cuts like "Take My Blood" seem like they might have been contenders with a bit more of the tweaking they'd already undergone to make it here. The high level of competent musicianship and conviction displayed by this quartet is in no short supply, with an especially great performance by the new guitarists Sven and Spiros who have stepped into Manni Schmidt's seat with a loyal grasp of the group's traditional riffing and lead styles. Had I not looked at the actual lineup on the album I wouldn't have noticed, although I'll add that Manni and a bunch of the band's other alumni are present on "Prayers of Steel '94", whipping out some leads and drum battery.

I don't really care for "The Blow in a Row", a medley of earlier tracks across the band's first decade, entirely unnecessary as almost all of them should be sought out on their own for the far superior listening experience. We don't need a 'sampler' here, so this is a complete toss-out. Another issue I take is that this is one of those 90s Rage albums that suffers a bit from the drier production; quite like I scored some marks against the otherwise-great Missing Link, this one just doesn't sound all that good when I compare the mix vs the instrumentation. So in the end, while 10 Years in Rage is on paper a really compelling idea, a little more effort might have been spent on how the recording came across the speakers, and perhaps chopping off the useless medley and the 'new version' tune, despite all its fun lead guitars. What remains would still have proven one of my least-regarded studio albums of their whole career, but it would have felt a little more worthwhile as a panoply of Rage cuts that I would not have otherwise experienced. Sandwiched between two of their rock-solid, and most famous 90s albums, it's understandable why this one is so often neglected.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

http://www.rage-official.com/

Rage - Refuge EP (1994)

The song "Refuge" is a bit of a foreshadowing since that's the name Peavy Wagner would take on later to reunite with Manni Schmidt and Chris Efthimiadas, playing music which assumedly is in the direction of where they would have gone if Rage itself hadn't shifted its lineup. The title track is one of the finer pieces on The Missing Link, a riffy, perky and memorable update to their 80s style, although produced a bit dryly as I felt a number of their 90s albums were. However, that sterility doesn't bleed into the actual music so much, it's a track that at the time would be worthy of a single, which is more or less what this Japan-only EP represents. The remainder of the content on this is a trio of cover tracks; and if we're being real, that's the only reason anyone would have been tracking it down...with the remastered 2002 Noise reissue of the full-length Missing Link album, this is essentially useless, since the covers are ported over there.

But not so back in 1994, and what we're dealing with are serviceable if not trailblazing renditions that do their best to adapt the originals into the Rage canon. The Police's "Truth Hits Everybody" is turned into a punkier, driving force which is kept metal by Peavy's pitch, and though it's exceedingly simplistic I do dig the little lead flourishes Manni throws onto it. With "I Can't Control Myself", you get one of your favorite (or my favorite) Troggs' tunes beefed up, and I swear I'd heard this done before in a metal context but I'm not sure who by or if I'm just remembering this particular cover. Lastly, they offer up a classy choice of The Mission's "Beyond the Pale", something a lot more unexpected as it hails from one of my favorite English Gothic rock bands, a painfully underrated one. The German trio doesn't quite sink this one into the net quite as well, perhaps because it just isn't one they can crank up to their style and pace so much, but it does still convey a measure of the original's mood and at the very least I can appreciate their good taste. The bass sounds good, the soothing vocal harmonies, it's certainly a competent paean to The Mission's Children album, just wouldn't seem to be as fun to insert into a live set as the other two here.

Basically, here the Japanese fans and metal importers of the 90s were getting a bit of a treat that the rest of us plebeians wouldn't enjoy for a good chunk of the following decade, but if you did then it was probably pleasant enough to have, and it does add a little more value to the Missing Link remaster.

Verdict: Indifference [5.5/10]

http://www.rage-official.com/

Machine Head - Burn My Eyes (1994)

Machine Head is a bad band which becomes even more tragic for me when I look at what some of its members had accomplished years before its creation. That's not to say that Burn My Eyes is in any way the Californians' career nadir, far from it, but when I compare even this earlier effort to the first two Vio-lence albums that Rob Flynn played on it becomes instantly disappointing how much the guy absolutely sold the fuck out to whatever was trendy during the 90s. To be part of such kinetic, vicious, nearly flawless thrash metal like Eternal Nightmare, fully capable of causing the mullets to frenzy about and moshing to naturally erupt without the need for cheap breakdowns, and then later start up a band for which banal tribal tattoo mosh culture was the entire impetus to exist just comes across as depressing. Perhaps he was burned out with the diminishing success of his alma mater, who themselves were decreasing in quality as the changes in popular culture demoralized the second and lower tier thrash acts to try their hands at a more mall-accessible brand of heaviness, but virtually every effort I've heard from this band has felt like a dull slap in the face with a side of stale, bruised beef.

To be fair, Burn My Eyes is at least someone in touch with its thrashing foundations. Flynn and crew were unquestionably listening to bands like Biohazard and Pantera, probably also closely following the path that Brazilians Sepultura were taking, and this debut feels like someone had packed, beaten and kneaded those flavors into a rough thrash taffy by the pier. The focus is clearly on making big dumb grooves to hold the tougher audience elements' attention span, hip hop with chords and chugs, but then the band lacked the NYHC street cred, or the overbearing personality of Phil Anselmo's vocals, or Dimebag's ability to compose such sticky riffs. Burn My Eyes gets some credit for me though in how Machine Head manages to balance off its dynamics and give the meatheadedness some atmosphere. Part of this is accomplished by having such strongly produced drums, they really thunder around here and make even the more primal and predictable riffs stir the blood more than I'd have otherwise expected. Adam Duce's bass-lines sound pretty good throughout the album, thick as a brick. The shouted vocals are also well mixed to tap into the caveman genes, and they do occasionally manage to alternate some other tempos into the 'jump da fuc up' riffs which are probably the money shots the band and Roadrunner were counting on. There's also a little tendency to incorporate some mechanical higher pitched guitar lines in to flesh out the groove, I'm occasionally reminded of Prong circa 1990-1994, although Tommy Victor was far better at writing good music.

I mean if you just got out the gym back in the mid 90s, grabbed a copy of this over at Tower Records and had a little testosterone left to channel, I can imagine that the gut punching duo of the singles "Davidian" and "Old" would have been the best thing ever! Unless of course that you already had been listening to metal music for any length of time before that and realized that the aggression in the medium doesn't always need to be so tailor fit toward its most shallow instincts. Flynn tries to spin a lot of the tough guy sustain on his vocal lines, but he's just never had the bravado of Anselmo, or perhaps it's that he was lacking the Southern accent that put Phil over the top. He actually sounds like he's half-way between THAT Phil, and another Phil, Rind of Sacred Reich. The rappy vocals on songs like "A Thousand Lies" were mirroring Biohazard, but in that case lack some of the goofier beefcake charm of those topless, chiseled Brooklyn brutes; and a few of the cleaner lines seem like they lack confidence, as in "None But My Own" where they sound sort of drugged and dopey. Guitars grooves here like the breakdown in "None but My Own" sound like they're just doing their best to mimic stuff from A Vulgur Display of Power, although I'll cut some slack in that the very structure, mechanistic patterns seem to live up to their namesake.

The lyrics are far from the worst I've read from a lot of the groove metal bands of the 90s, but still just a combination of pretty obvious cliches about personal suffering and strengthening with some topical remnants of the 80s thrash that the band grew out of. The cover artwork is awful; is this weird blurred out guy copulating with the person in front him, or is that supposed to be the same dude head banging hard and being caught in various positions of the act? Whatever the answer, bro, it definitely makes me want to burn out my own eyes, so I can't blame Machine Head for false advertising there.

Verdict: Indifference [5.75/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Konkhra - The Facelift EP (1994)

After Sexual Affective Disorder, Konkhra decided to ditch the freaky death metal artwork and enlighten us to their fetish for beautiful women with handguns, first turning the firearm upon the audience (The Facelift EP), and then back upon herself (Spit or Swallow). Very clever, I see what you did there, blokes. When it comes down to the songwriting, however, The Facelift is quite in line with the album before it, only it feels like a fire has been lit beneath the Danes as they seem to opt for a more uptempo and energetic approach to the bludgeoning death metal. I mean this did come out before Slaughter of the Soul, and it's nowhere near on the level of quality writing as an album like that, but it feels like a band similarly possessed of wanting to mete out more exciting fare than what they'd been getting up to before it.

And at four tracks and 14 and a half minutes, you probably want to keep this material concise and engaging just because you don't have much space to experiment. Konkhra launches "Drowning (Dead Dreaming") and "Facelift" itself straight at you, two ragers that feel like they've been picked and accelerated from the crop of tunes embodying Sexual Affective Disorder. Definitely a little bit of D-beat-like fury propelling them, especially the title track, but affixed with a lot of the brutal low end chugging guitars which feel punishing and nihilistic for their lack of any real melodic value. There are some leads here, and as usual they're a bit too flimsy, however I will give some credit that I was able to better hear them than on the two prior releases and it's a step in the right direction. The drums are agile and effective, while the bass has this great, fat tone warbling along under the oppressive palm muting which is probably the best it had sounded so far. The vocals are still decent in either the guttural or snarl intonations, but oftentimes I felt like they were just bobbing along on the sea of highly destructive chugging which creates such a percussive blitz that nothing can compete.

"Warzone" gets a little slower, but just as chug-heavy, with some sections where you can really hear that bass guitar come out on its own. This one is meant for brawls to break out at gigs, so to that degree it's effective, although obviously less exciting than the others. Lastly you get a 'live' version of "Basic Facts of Life", which sounds almost too perfect, and here you can even makeout the little lead guitar effects even more, which are pretty cool to balance off against the bass and drum grooves. This is another utter mosh-fest, almost with the street hardcore backbone to it, and to be honest was my favorite track here, although it's all really primitive, caveman aggression. Again, like with Sexual Affective Disorder, this isn't one I'm going to recommend based on good licks or songs that will become your favorite in the death metal medium, and possibly not recommend at all, but if you do really like the basics delivered with pounding, crushing force, you could do much worse.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

https://konkhra.com/veryfuckingmetal/

Prong - Cleansing (1994)

I don't think you could listen through albums like Beg to Differ and Prove You Wrong and NOT think Tommy Victor had a fascination with industrial or electronic music. While those were organic thrash manifestations for the most part, there was clearly an undercurrent of clinical, machine-like riffing, beats and production which made an album like Cleansing almost inevitable. But it's not until this 1994 effort that Prong embarked on a more even split between its thrashing roots and the electronic experimentation; I'm of course excluding the remix EP from a couple years prior which was an abomination. What I'm most impressed with, is that rather than merely aping the flavors of the day, such as Ministry, who were enjoying massive success due to Psalm 69 and steady touring, they made something of their own out of this stylistic crossbreeding. Not to say that there aren't a couple riffs here, as in "Whose Fist is This Anyway?", which Alain Jourgensen might have penned himself, but this one manages to stand out and even outlive a lot of other US industrial rock bands why fell by the wayside somewhere around the late 90s when emo and nu-metal started to bifurcate their projected audiences.

What really surprises me is just how laid back this record is. Similar to Beg to Differ it's exceedingly simple and subliminal in how it's constructed. While there are programmed beats occasionally, they were still leaning on Ted Parsons for the actual drumming, and he sets up a well-produced set of grooves here that give all the guitars, samples, and pluggy little bass-lines room to work upon the listener's expectations. The rhythm guitars are extremely minimal patterns, but even where they feel familiar there is something refreshing about how they serve the overall aesthetic of the album. The tone is punchy and processed, but works equally well whether Victor is cycling through some of his basic palm mutings or the more expressive, dissonant, often warm open chords that are used to detail out some of the verses and choruses. Tracks like "Another Worldly Device" and "Cut-Rate" are still heavily rooted in the thrash we'd come to expect, but the band really stretches itself out with things like the funky guitar line in "Broken Peace" or "Not of This Earth", which twists a riff similar to "Hell If I Could" from Prove You Wrong into something that almost sounds like a darker Jane's Addiction. Another interesting piece was "Home Rule" which reminded me a lot of Voivod with its jarring, wonderful chord progressions and the swerving bass grooves.

Of course, this is all brought into the Prong stable by Tommy Victor's blunt voice, which connects this all to their greater body of work, and fits in really well with the mechanistic blueprints whether he's going straight at the mic or putting a little industrial filtering on their. What further thrusts this into that genre is the liberal use of sampling that sits just behind the main instruments and vocals, almost as if its afraid to truly intrude, but loud enough to matter when categorizing Cleansing. There are political/authoritarian rants, crowd chants, and machine noises in there, all adding to the sonic palette without detracting or distracting. I can't actually pick out a weak track in the bunch...perhaps there are a couple overly repetitive passages on the album, or a few groove metal licks that are a little too generic in retrospect, but this one manages to fill out nearly an entire hour and maintain its consistency and immersion, all the way to the catchy but mellowed thrashing throughout "Test". I've mentioned that the album felt 'laid back' to me, but I don't want that to imply that it lacks energy; it's aggression is simply focused on the robotic nature of its rhythms, the tautness of the lower end guitars that is counterbalanced by the delicious processed open chords which appear later.

Even within this small microcosm of Prong's sound there is a good dynamic balance which leaves me with a fulfilling impression for one of my favorite albums in their whole 30+ year history. This was also the hottest I think the band had ever been thanks largely to the MTV video rotation for "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck", which was also lampooned on Beavis & Butt-head. And deservedly so...this was a still a band hungry to explore what it could achieve, never balking at stretching its parameters and as a result we've got about a decade of quality albums which build upon their predecessors in interesting ways. For me, the streak didn't end here.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10] (all the spaces between bleed)

https://prongmusic.com/

Samael - Ceremony of Opposites (1994)

For quite a few folks I know, Ceremony of Opposites is the point at which first contact was made with the music of Samael, and thus it cultivates a level of nostalgia that subsequent recordings might not ever have been able to generate. I can't say I share this sentiment, but it is easily the first album they released upon which the Swiss had truly come up with a distinct sound. It's probably also where a lot of the heretic-burning 'underground or die' pundits also fell off the wagon, for even though the band had been pretty simple up to its manifestation, this was a whole new level of accessibility and base riffing which eschewed any notion of complexity or raw, obscure malevolence. But fuck if this wasn't/isn't unique! In fact, despite a few of the band's own impersonators, and perhaps Therion's more Gothic/death oriented Lepaca Kliffoth, I can't think of much else I've heard over the course of tens of thousands, decades worth of CDs, which is much the same...pieces, perhaps, but not in full.

It's undoubtedly controversial to purists that one might label this 'black metal' at all, but at the core of the experience, that is what manifests; it simply exists as a stark contrast to what many of the band's Scandinavian peers were generating with a shift to tremolo-picked riffing, technicality and speed (Emperor, Immortal, Enslaved, etc). Instead, this is plodding, moderately paced warlike black metal with a lot of grooving hooks and warmer melodic chord progressions, so simplistic that at several points, when first experiencing the album, I wondered why half the riffs hadn't been written before. Here you also get a little more priority placed on the synthesizer elements, which prior had served largely for intros, interludes and instrumentals but would ingrain themselves into one of the most fundamental pieces of the band's sound. Ceremony of Opposites certainly takes its cues from the sophomore Blood Ritual, and you can clearly hear how this serves as a prototype for the albums to follow, but it also really stands on its own as a sort of 'gateway drug' into the band's evolving style, not to mention a swan song for the stricter adherence to occult-based lyrics which dominated the earlier catalog. Not, not my favorite Samael, but as a runner up, it will more than suffice.

Songs trend towards shorter, pop and rock-length structures which maintain a steady procession of new and intriguing content, but at the same time wrap up the record tightly in 36 minutes. Almost are the songs are equally mesmerizing and yet have an interlinked quality about them that generates the same aesthetic of some pompous infernal army marching through a nocturnal battlefield with their chests puffed out, horns polished and sharpened and ghastly standards unfurled. We're still hearing a lot of those base thrash and death metal elements in the chord patterns, but the rhythm guitars just have this memorable flow to them ("Black Trip", "Celebration of the Fourth", etc) which grooves on the conscience. Don't be mistaken, as I mentioned earlier, it does show a further proclivity towards symphonic arrangements, but this is very much a guitar record, because without those unshakeable chords, wrought in a loud, simultaneously blunt and spiked distortion (like a morningstar of post- modernized Hellhammer tone), grinding up against Vorphalack's nihilistic barking, this would fall completely fat. There are a few tunes later on in the track listing where the guitars do seem to revert a little more towards the style of the earlier albums, and these represent the least compelling moments of the experience, but even there they have that chunky predisposition for throwing out a catchy death metal line ("To Our Martyrs" bridge).

The bass playing is also a titanic improvement over Blood Ritual and Worship Him, not because it's more technical or involved, but because of its thick, syrupy texture to it which becomes important in propelling the percussion and forging out its own path; even when the lines are super minimalistic accompaniment for the pulse of the kick drum. The beats in general are exceedingly bare, rock oriented with the added weight of a few double bass patterns and muscular fills, and frankly nothing more intense or busy would really fit this set of tunes, but strangely enough they're not as effective as the programmed stuff on the followup album. Probably because this relies just so heavily on the listener's attention to those guitars, but there are instances like "Baphomet's Throne" where they fit incredibly well with the sampled horns. Most of the synth lines here are actually divided between choirs and horns, so it maintains a marginal nod to the exotic Celtic Frost influence (To Mega Therion). I wouldn't say they were quite as developed as they'd become on the next pair of full length albums, nor as essential, and even mildly 'cheesy' in nature, but it adds just a crucial fraction of atmosphere which rounds Ceremony out as something 'greater' and/or 'deeper' than the debut.

The lyrics, on the other hand, are fucking brilliant when paired up against either of the prior records, with plenty of quotable lines for listeners who can relate to the band's narcissistic mysticism, night sky fascinating and occult devotion. They've saved the best of this for last. Passage does possess a few logical throwbacks to similar themes, but I found that more deeply poetic, personal and broadly appealing in terms of its flow of imagery. At any rate, this and that album represent the pinnacle of the prose, since they'd eventually start penning drivel which came off like they were supposed to be the metal version of the Universal Unitarian Church or some tripe. Here, you can just revel in the evil, the masquerading about in human skin, the blood red seductions and the greater picture of the encroaching endtimes embedded in Samael's collective imagination. "Black Trip", "Flagellation", "Celebration of the Fourth" and "Son of Earth" are all particularly poignant, but not one tune here really lags behind in this regard.

First two albums: great. This one: the first bonafide classic in their repertoire. Tightly balanced between eloquence and barbarity. Simple riffs masquing complicated themes. Hidden beneath every groove, every structure, every rough-shod synthesizer, a Dark Prince leering at the listener. Hail the Goddamn Devil. Roil with the Flesh and Earth. One last time, before the call of the Cosmos.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10] (there in I plunge)

http://www.samael.info/Above/index.html

Asphyx - Asphyx (1994)

There are exactly three things I liked more about the eponymous 1994 Asphyx record than either of its predecessors, which I'll get into further on, but ultimately it's just too easy to forget amidst an era in which a lot of younger bands were creating more exciting, unique, volatile sounds and taking risks to further intensity death metal as a whole. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for an old school album that 'gets it right' through tremendous riffing quality, atmosphere, production, and vocals with some charnel character to them, but Asphyx falls flat in two of those specific categories and its strengths do nothing to compensate. That this album was even possible two years after Last One on Earth, with 2/3rds of that core lineup gone (van Drunen and Bagchus) to other pursuits, is not lost upon me as a relatively impressive feat, but any 'magic' the Dutch trio might have garnered from their earlier momentum seems to have ground to a halt. The Century Media deal persisted, there was plenty of visibility and thus every chance to expand their following, but this music hardly seemed vital or inspired.

There are positives, of course! Firstly, I find the production here richer and more atmospheric than either The Rack or Last One..., which is suited to this more structured approach to songwriting. Granted, most of that songwriting is a 'drag', but not because the instrument levels or off, or because the vocals stand out too much or too little against them. Asphyx has a fairly resonant appeal to it, and that's important because this leads to my second compliment: the death/doom elements are far more pervasive, and they sound far more grandiose, morose and downtrodden than where they popped up on the older material. Not that they're Lost Paradise or Gothic in quality, but you feel like you're trapped among abandoned columns in some ancient space that few people will ever see, and there's a sense of loss here that wasn't manifest on the older works, where the doomier passages were often just a dry breakdown groove. Lastly, the fucking leads on this thing absolutely rip, the greatest of Eric Daniels' tenure with Asphyx and especially successful when they're tearing out against some Scream Blood Gore/Leprosy-style tremolo picked progression as in the song "'Til Death Do Us Part". No, they're not remotely unique or inventive, but exciting and so well performed that the remainder of the s/t tends to suffer by comparison. Sadly, there's no other praise I can really heap upon this beast, because it's the sort of disc that feels ineffectual even upon first exposure...

The bass tones are appreciably repulsive, distorted and loud, especially during the faster and heavier sequences, but this was something they had already been ramping up with Last One on Earth, on which Ron van Pol had also played the bass, but he never really deviates from van Drunen's practice of aping the rhythm guitar line without contributing any depth beyond reinforcement (which is often just lazy). Of course, he's also providing the vocals as well, but here is where Asphyx suffers slightly, since van Pol's guttural Chris Reifert impression just doesn't have that manic, gruesome presence that van Drunen had already mastered in the 80s. This guy isn't a bad choice, per se, and thanks to the production he's able to build up a cavernous consistency over the riffs, but it's just one more reason this disc would never stand out against something like Demilich's Nespithe or the punctuation of Frank Mullen on the older Suffocation works. The new drummer, Sander van Hoof (aka Roel Sanders), could genuinely be considered an improvement over the performances on the older Asphyx outings, and it seems the trio was keeping with the times by hiring on a harder hitter, but apart from some double bass and energy this is just not in the same realm as where much death metal was headed by the mid-90s. Still, he's damn solid, and if you've heard his work with God Dethroned or Inhume then you'll know he remained that way.

When you're going the route of the eponymous record, it's supposed to be a 'statement' of sorts, and the only one I received after revisiting this example was to put it back on the shelf (with most of my Asphyx stuff, unfortunately). There's a good balance of material, the band still splitting their creativity between the death and doom halves of Daniels' imagination, and I through the funereal touches like the organs (in "Back Into Eternity") or the 4-minute instrumental intro "Prelude of the Unhonoured Funeral" were some of the most atmospherically compelling over the hour-long run time, but this album just repeatedly confronts me with excessively plain and plebeian chord patterns that render tunes like the nearly 10 minute "Initiation into the Ossuary" almost unbearable; and that's one of the tunes that focuses heavily on Death and Obituary-like riffing almost exclusively! Other tunes, like "Thoughts of an Atheist", contain passages so mind numbingly bland that I thought I had accidentally replaced my daily multivitamin dose with a sedative. Overall, it's not the worst they could've done, due largely to the strength of the production, the decently scripted lyrics, and those nasty leads, but unless you're the sort whose standards translate into every death metal disc pre-1995 being TRUE and/or PERFECT, I can't imagine it's going to leave you with much more of an impression than it left me.

Verdict: Indifference [6.25/10] (disposed by the ghost of death)

http://www.asphyx.nl/

Atrocity's Blut (1994)

Atrocity could be described as a band who started off quite strong as a part of the 'first wave' of German death metal, producing two well-liked and solid records before seemingly falling off the deep end into one of the most overt 90s identity crises I've encountered. Specifically their 1994-1996 period it seemed like the band had absolutely no fucking idea what direction they would stick with. Blut is an amalgamation of miserable groove/death metal and Goth metal bits, Calling the Rain dabbles in folk/doom metal with ethereal female vocals, Willenskraft shows an unwillingness to step entirely away from their death metal roots, and Die Liebe (possibly the best of the lot) has them teaming up with the legendary industrial duo Das Ich to create something with both the industrial and Goth components. All of this was of course the setup for their Werk 80 album of popular cover tunes, which was one of their more successful discs, and then they'd actually go on to become a rather coherent Gothic/symphonic metal act with pretty high production standards, but the mid 90s was mired in utter turmoil by their two worst effort. Blut is, unfortunately, one of them...

It's rather a pity, too. My first exposure to the group was a mint cassette copy of Hallucinations I picked up in 1990, the days when I would literally purchase every recording I found with a death metal logo, in any store. It was solid stuff, nothing exceptional like what the Florida/Sweden scenes had produced, but another of those formative harbingers of the notion that the genre had gone viral worldwide, and that it wouldn't be long afore that world caught up. As such, Todessehnsucht did not disappoint: mildly less brutal and vital, but compensating with catchier songwriting. Naturally, I held some excitement out for the follow-up, Blut, since Atrocity really hadn't had their breakthrough yet and from external appearances it looked as if it might be some theatrical concept record about vampires. The logo superimposed over the curtain on the cover even appears to be the same one used on the movie posters for the '92 Dracula film adaptation starring Keanu Reeves, Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins. Turns out, that same movie did in fact inspire the theme here. Seemed like a good fit to me, even if it was still a pretty fresh flick...a European death metal band cutting its teeth on Bram Stoker's horror...that works, right? Oh no, my friends. Oh...no. Very, very wrong, for Blut is a prime example of poor decision making in the decade that threatened to destroy it all: the 90s.

The shock I felt at this is comparable to that towards another German death metal band, Morgoth, on their later offering Feel Sorry for the Fanatic, where they mutated into a more melodic industrial rock band. I mean, apart from a few of Alexander ('How did he get this awesome name?') Krull's barks and grunts, and a few of the death metal breaks littered through the 15 songs and 64 minutes, this bears almost no resemblance towards the group's earlier albums. Instead, it's a scatterbrained transformation into a mixture of 'woe is me' Gothic metal tropes and bouncy, annoying groove metal riffing which lost its way from aping Prong into a catacomb of tremendously dumb, uninspired riffs and vocals that stand out far too far and sound immensely goofy over the tinge of the rhythm guitar tone. What's more, Blut is front-loaded with some of its shittiest tunes...if you dig deeply enough, you'll find there is actually some passable material in the track list, which foreshadows their direction at the turn of the century and beyond, but in getter there it stumbles over some truly terrible songwriting which remains the nadir of their career (alongside Calling the Rain...let me not forget my venom for that one). And while lyrically this album seems well attuned to its subject matter, of eternal life, horrible appetites, insatiable lusts and being forsaken by the divine, left to walk to the earth as a beast, the musical riffs and structures are generally too obtrusive to allow for full immersion.

Imagine you and I are sitting at our local theater, soles stuck in last week's derelict popcorn butter, hearts full of anticipation for this new blockbuster starring one of our favorite actors (an actor's actor!) as the big heel, and the opening act is this shitty, bouncing chug rhythm that sounds like a castaway from Prong's Cleansing. That describes "Trial", a crappy groove/thrash dud that has no fucking business here or anywhere. While I might forgive just the one, then the record lurches into "Miss Direct", a strange BDSM number driven by farting, dorky bass lines and clinical nu-thrash rhythms drowned in some of Krull's worst vocals ever. What the fuck is this? It's hard to hone in on any potential fetish-erection when your song sounds like a bunch of clowns visiting the Red Light district and honking hooker-boobs like they were toy horns. To top that off, they transition back into ANOTHER pseudo-Prong/Pantera groove metal tune ("In My Veins"), and like the opener, pretty much the only saving grace are the methodical lead sequences which hearken back to their older style. We're now about 12 minutes into Blut and there's no relief in sight from the horrors; Atrocity finally living up to their name, but not in the manner they likely intended. It's honestly one of the most pathetic 1-2-3 combos I've heard on a neo-death metal record outside of Massacre's abysmal Promise.

But then, like a breeze of air freshener greeting you in amidst the stench of a nightclub restroom, "B.L.U.T" itself arrives, a mesh of glittery progressive metal melodies and synthesized Gothic choirs, quality arch-like bass lines and Krull's clean baritone vocals interspersed with the angrier grunts that resemble Christofer Johnsson on Therion's superb Lepaca Kliffoth. It's not exactly magic, and I still the tinny crunch of the rhythm guitar here as much as the prior tracks, but such a dramatic improvement in terms of interest-level. It gets stranger, as Blut seems to wobble back and forth between a myriad of ideas, several traipsing back into Todessehnsucht territory and failing, others like the folk/ballad "Calling the Rain" (oh yes, it appeared first) implementing clean guitars with tinny effects, and Krull's sister Yasmin making her appearance with some pretty standard Euro-ethereal vox not unlike a less jubilant Liv Kristine (of Norway's Theater of Tragedy), who ironically would end up marrying Alexander. There's a song in German ("Leichenfeier") centered around some plodding riffs that sounds like a doom metal Lacrimosa variant. The strange Prong-ish tunes continue ("Moon-Struck", "Goddess in Black"), there are several instrumental interludes like the acoustics of "Soul Embrace", but there never seems to be any real sense of coherence to the material, except that so much of it is weak. Blut is not a confusing album, but a 'confused' one, and it speaks volumes that the best song on it is a 90 second bass and guitar instrumental which captures the atmosphere of a moonlit light better than anything else here.

At best, the Goth elements here served as precursors to records where they delved far more consistently into that style, like Gemini and Atlantis or the more recent symphonic/Gothic/death metal hybrid Okkult which is actually one of their best. Stylistic disparity isn't Blut's only crippler, because I found the production of the guitars here to be just too clean, tinny and robbed of any real meat or power. Again, I draw a comparison to Prong, particularly Cleansing, though that album had richer rhythm guitar riffs, superior songwriting over all, and of course was handled by Terry Date who has a decent track record. The drum mix here is also pretty bland, the bass lines rarely interesting, and while I do enjoy Krull's more melodic rantings thanks to the edge and gravitas his death metal origins give them, he's simply too loud on a good portion of the album. The lyrics, while not perfect, seem to do a decent job of getting into the mindsets of vampires or other characters with a lot of Anne Rice's eloquence. The reader can feel these are Romantic, tragic tellings, now if only the music could have more successfully met that benchmark, then Blut could have been well ahead of its time, at least in the Gothic metal field. But the ball was dropped, no, shattered on the cracked, ivy-wrung pavement, and nothing here holds up to any scrutiny. Weak guitar tone, uninspired riffs (even the few delves back into death metal feel pitifully non-evil), and at times sheepishly silly vocals that were unlikely to get Krull laid at the same clubs Peter Steele was attending.

I don't fault Blut because it was an experiment. It's not that Atrocity was 'ashamed' of its death metal roots, and decided not to pursue that genre directly through the remainder of the 90s (listen to Willenskraft or some of the tunes off later albums), but they obviously felt a cloying impetus to branch out into new territory, and not to restrict themselves. It worked out for them eventually, because they dove straight into that emergent European goth metal scene to some accolades...who exploring that stuff at the time didn't stumble across one of the Germans' covers of obvious, dramatic 80s pop songs? Inevitably, I feel like Atrocity did turn themselves into a respectable band once more, and even in these fragile times, they had some success (Die Liebe and Willenskraft are both worth hearing, if not exceptional). That said, Blut remains as a giant warning sign: covered pits ahead, do not tread these paths, do not travel these roads, and if you ignore this advice, bring a grappling hook. I've never lied about my feelings on albums before, and I'm not about to start: this is pretty god-damned bad. Listen to them! The children of the night. What sweet music they don't make.

Verdict: Epic Fail [2/10] (damned and addicted to survive)

http://www.atrocity.de/

Insanity - Death After Death (1994)

Perhaps it was the artistic exodus from metal that plagued the middle of the 90s, or perhaps it was the bland band moniker (there must be at least a dozen other Insanities), or perhaps even that San Francisco's Insanity was playing such a heavily 80s hybrid of thrash and death metal in a time when brutality, technicality, gore soaked and misogynist lyrics were emerging as the preeminent factors in the field. Even if all three factors contributed to this record's obscurity, I think it would be hard to argue that Death After Death deserved better than it got, and in today's heavily nostalgic underground climate, this Hell's Headbangers vinyl reissue is definitely likely to stab the attention spans of those who were previously ignorant of its existence.

Of course, just how 'death metal' this album is/was will vary by perspective. Treacherously little of the morbid tremolo-styled riffs or crushing palm-muted grooves one would expect. Personally I find it to be a more hyperactive mesh of speed and thrash metal with some more-aggressive-than-normal vocals had they been on an 80s record; almost as if you cranked up the celerity of Possessed, welded in some wild licks that wouldn't have been out of question for Dave Mustaine to perform in his prime, and perhaps a hint of other psycho blitzers like Whiplash, (early) Exodus and Dark Angel for good measure. Splatter speed. Morbid Saint and Ripping Corpse might also be decent reference points, but for my money, both of them had transitioned further over into the death spectrum. The drums of Bud Mills, though, could definitely be counted among the Hoglans and Lombardos in their impact on more extreme metal later. But regardless of its precise classification, Death After Death is the sort of invigorated, energizing affair that occasionally eschews rhyme and reason for a crash bang wallop of accelerated abuse that might damn well appeal to thrash/speed purists, proto-death mavens, or even those crossover fans who like a more metallic centrism to the material. It's not incredibly memorable, but it very much puts me back into that mid to late 80s mood (rather than the 90s in which it was dropped).

Calculated, spastic street riffing dominates pieces like "Attack of Archangels", "Morbid Lust", and "Blood for Blood" (coincidentally my favorites here), but the band sounds cruel and raw even when slowing to a mid-paced neck straining sequence. The leads are lunacy given flesh, flashy and spurious but not so gratingly atonal and caustic as, say, Slayer. The drums are definitely capable of sustaining a double bass rampage, and the kicks and snappy snares definitely distinguish themselves in the mix. Bass playing here is pretty busy too, but subjugated by the rhythm guitars, unfortunately pretty standard for thrash of the late 80s/early 90s. What I'm most impressed with are the surgical sounding lead/melody lines embedded into riffs like the one at the minute mark in "Possession", or leading off "Rotting Decay", which coincidentally also has some of the best bass guitar progressions on the record. Interestingly enough composed that I think Insanity lives up to their (rather generic) name, and might have had a more visible career in technical thrash ala later Nasty Savage had they only arrived with this full-length a few years earlier (they were still doing demos for much of the 80s).

I should also say that the vocals here are quite primal and abusive, occasionally with a little growl to the sustained notes, but otherwise like a mix of Don Doty, Nasty Ronnie and Jeff Becerra. Over the top and murderous barking which often sounds like a one-man gang shout. They really don't have much by way of a memorable chorus anywhere, but most of the tunes are at least as exhilarating as a night at the zoo when a predator becomes uncaged and starts mutilating the guests. Insanity also tries its hand at acoustic passages ("In Memory") and exhibit some classical picking/training; feels thinly produced, and a little out of place and disjointed with the metal intensity, but hinting at broader musical tastes. In the end, while I wasn't entirely in love with the album, there are at least 5-6 tunes on Death After Death which are pedal to the metal, balls out ballistic exercises worth pursuing. A marginal cult classic status is deserved, and with the vastly improved cover artwork for the new gatefold vinyl, it might be time for collectors or fanatics for any of the other bands I name-checked in this review to end their negligence and give Insanity a listen. Unless they/you already HAVE, in which case have another golden star.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

https://www.facebook.com/pages/INSANITY/57208433713

Cryptopsy - Blasphemy Made Flesh (1994)

Cryptopsy ranks pretty highly on my personal list of bands whose ratio of enjoyable, interesting music to popularity is tenuous at best, to the point of puzzlement. Yeah, they've got a few good decent albums, one of which is admittedly better than good, but also a fair number of letdowns and misguided experiments littering their discography. Despite the fluid and rampant technical ability they displayed even in their earliest years, and the undeniable, awkward charisma of former vocalist Lord Worm, they were simply not a band I've ever really trusted in to deliver the most memorable of riffs, or evil, atmospheric death metal hymns that burned the old school brutality into my brain for the likely remainder of my existence. It's sort of how I've felt through Suffocation's career, only the New Yorkers got off to a stronger start, and have had a stretch of more consistent material in recent times. I would never deign to disavow Cryptopsy's influence on hundreds if not thousands of brutal and technical death metal acts to follow (in the 90s and beyond), but sadly much of that inspiration took on the form of their least compelling components: the brutal, riff-less bursts of speed and bouncy, empty slam oriented rhythms that are prevalent on a good chunk of their debut Blasphemy Made Flesh, an album which I still to this day consider 'training wheels' for its vastly superior followup.

There were some clear positives when I was first exposed to the band and this record, aesthetic details that no doubt played a large part in their early, infectious spread through the underground. The band's name and logo were fantastic, and the original cover artwork an instant thrill for fans of records like Sepultura's Arise or Obituary's Cause of Death. Cryptopsy were one of the few North American acts licensed to Germany's Black Diamond/Invasion Records, and also one of the heavier acts on that imprint alongside Excrement, Vomiturition, Infestdead, Vomiting Corpses and Lunatic Invasion. Despite the sickness and violent themes involved, the lyrics had a peculiar, personal and poetic sense of playfulness about them, almost like Dan Greening (Lord Worm) was implementing his English studies into a sadistic sideshow attraction. They were immediately unique by comparison to so many of the gore-driven, misogynist fiends starting to cycle into redundancy, who had taken over the more extreme end of the genre; a manic food for thought that showed some obvious effort. In fact, the lyrics of Blasphemy Made Flesh are hands down my favorite part of the album, and I only wish that the songwriting itself had been so compulsory and unusual. Granted, there are a few pretty unique facets to the playing of the other musicians which stood out, in particular the rhythm section of Flo Mouriner and Martin Fergusson, but they're not able to fully compensate for the rather banal selection of rhythm guitar progressions which flew into one ear and straight out the opposite, without colliding in the center to turn the brain to mush.

Blasphemy Made Flesh belonged to that category of 90s death metal efforts which was seeking to push the parameters of its parent genre without necessarily abandoning the inviolable core of the medium. There are a number of 2nd generation tremolo picked riffs here and standard growls which pay credence to the Floridian and Dutch forefathers of the style, and fellow Canadians Gorguts, who had the jump on Cryptopsy by only a few years and would share a large crossover audience. But the emphasis here was to force the speed limit and cluttered intensity of the composition, and less to create resonant, memorable riffs. Where albums like Severed Survival, Consuming Impulse, Left Hand Path, Cause of Death and even to an extent Effigy of the Forgotten had paved the way with foul, mesmeric aberrations of thrash-based techniques, this basically borrowed and rearranged familiar note sequences and then dialed up the volume and elasticity of the drums and bass, which combined with Worm's garbled ranting seemed like a night at a circus with an audience of severed heads. There's a fuck ton happening throughout the 40 minutes of music, but apart from the speed and lyrical ravings, precious little information is retainable, and even if the guitars were configured into more exciting and catchy progressions, they seem a bit too searing, muddled and distant to really matter on a cut like "Abigor" or "Defenestration".

I could see how Mounier's dextrous striking was intimidating for its day; not as far a leap in the belligerence and technique of percussion as a Lombardo or Hoglan from the previous decade, but so fast and involved that it often feels like the sticks are about to escape Flo's hands and start playing themselves. Blasting, fills, and piledriver double bass crashing everywhere against the guitars. What's more, unlike a lot of the bands that later sucked off Cryptopsy's fumes but with a more programmed, polished studio sterility, this sounded quite live and straight to the chin, sans an excess of studio finesse. You could be hearing this straight from the band's jam space, or on stage. The bass lines are incredibly bouncy and copious, almost funky, to the point that where Martin Fergusson hits a higher chord it sounds like some sort of rambling, farting device that adds an air of unintentional hilarity to the proceedings. The guy was a fucking maniac, and even though most would come to identify the position with his successor, Éric Langlois, who has to date performed on most of their records, I can only wonder at what he might have created had he followed a more prolific career in the genre...

On the flip side, the performances of this pair do contribute to the smothering of the rhythm guitar tracks of Jon Levasseur and Steve Thibault, which weren't all that interesting to begin with. Lots of meaty palm muted chugging and fits of basis tremolo picked, surgical precision are alternated in a relish of deep distortion that often disintegrates into background noise for the acrobatics of the other players. Nothing we really hadn't already heard from a band like Suffocation or Cannibal Corpse, and while the songs aren't really lacking for variation, the percussive shifts in tempo are more exciting than the actual notes slung together. As further proof, just listen to how much the leads and melodies stand out where they appear, like the thrashing bridge and eerie pattern at around 3:00 in "Abigor", or the shredding in "Serial Messiah" and "Born Headless". Really, these are the only instances of a tangible 'atmosphere' on the album (apart from an intro like on "Serial Messiah"), and when they strike amidst the blunt, taut, and tiring blandness of the rhythm guitars, I just wish everything else was better written. The playing is all around fast as fuck and slightly technical for the time, but really I'd have just as much luck sitting by the side of the highway and watching traffic pass. After nearly two decades with the album, I've been unable to change my mind on this. Some of the blast beat rhythm guitars as in the closer "Pathological Frolic" are just downright boring.

As for Worm, he grunts and growls with enough gusto that you don't feel the sense of monotony creep in which brought low a number of other mid-90s death metal front men. His techniques aren't exactly unique, but his alternation of the lower pitched, primal troglodyte gutturals and a lot of snarling strangled cat phrases which shift the pitch (but aren't layered over one another constantly like Glen Benton). Not as schizo and attention earning as the lyrics themselves, but neither are they the low point of this recording by a long shot. I'm aware that the guy was known for his crazy stage presence, but this doesn't entirely translate onto the recording itself. He was good at writing, and competent at keeping the listener awake, but it's hardly like the first time I heard John Tardy, Chris Reifert, Martin van Drunen or Craig Pillard where I peed myself and hid in my closet until all the bad monsters would go away. I'm not about to play the 'overrated' card, since the guy still brought something individual to the genre, and was their best front man; but all the same, I was never butthurt when he and the band parted ways (at least the first time between None So Vile and Whisper Supremacy).

Blasphemy Made Flesh isn't shit, and its flaws might be forgiven if I was to blindly adulate every single death metal record released between 1991-1995 (like some folks I've encountered). A decent headbanger with a faint few glimmers of creativity, which places the listener back in its age of conception, but ultimately it amounts to little more than a warmup for its successor. Just another instance where I wish an album was as menacing as it looked. Or as it intended. That I found this disc one of the blueprints for a lot of 'meh' brutal death metal bands to come, or a middling warmup for its successor (a record which actually does deserve its place on the pedestal of punishment), doesn't help its case, but like any other musical medium, I want death metal I can remember. That I can rampage to. Stab to. Cackle maniacally to. Be afraid of. The Cryptopsy debut does not provide that for me; it's more like a steamroller of insipid horror sequels rather than one frightening classic with scenes that I can never escape.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10] (to give the gift of murder)

http://cryptopsy.ca/